Above: 95 Dwyer Ave. in Liberty, New York after the storm. Photo by Angela Page.
The storm that Hurricane Sandy became when it made landfall last night hit the village of Liberty especially hard.
High winds and heavy rains plunged Liberty into darkness, ripped bricks off the front of a building on Main Street, and blocked over a dozen streets with downed trees and electrical wires.
A four-block stretch of Dwyer Avenue was especially hard-hit, with houses and cars crushed by falling trees and surrounded by splintered telephone poles.
"This really is the first storm I've seen with so many trees on top of houses, on top of cars, across the roads, torn down lines, snapped poles," said Peter Parks, the superintendent of Village of Liberty Department of Public Works, who has worked for the village for 20 years.
Parks said that during the course of the storm, 12 to 15 of Liberty's streets were blocked by storm debris. His department also blocked off a portion of Main Street in front of a church building located at 24 North Main Street after bricks began to fall off the facade, he said. He added that the power was out throughout Liberty during much of the night.
At noon on Tuesday, Parks said that the power had returned and that all of Liberty's roads have been cleared, with the exception of Dwyer Ave and Wheeler Place. "There's a big tree across Wheeler with lines involved," he said.
"There's a lot of trees down on numerous streets, but Dwyer was hit the hardest," Parks said. "In that area there's a lot of spruce trees, and the ground is saturated. They're quite tall, and they don't grow deep in the ground."
Angela Page lives on the stretch of Dwyer Avenue -- between Summit Ave. and Woodland Ave. -- that was most damaged.
While her house was fine, Page told the Watershed Post this morning that a falling telephone pole across the street at 67 Dwyer Ave had crushed two cars. Up the street at number 89, Page said that two telephone poles were snapped into multiple pieces in front of the house, and that downed treeshad landed on it. At 95 Dwyer, Page said, a tree fell through the roof of a house.
"There are big trees broken in everybody's yard," Page said.
Parks said that his highway crew was clearing downed trees and wires through the night.
"I've been here since 6pm Monday evening. So have most of the rest of the guys," he said. "They are a great bunch of guys. They worked in the dark, in the pouring rain, and they kept going at it. We just blocked roads and worked with the Village of Liberty Police Department on all their calls."
All photos are of Dwyer Ave. damage by Angela Page.
2:30pm update: The Times Herald-Record was on the scene in Liberty and filed this report. They give more detail about the damage on Dwyer Ave.:
One two-story home with yellow siding at 95 Dwyer Street on the corner of Summit Street was heavily damaged when a massive evergreen literally peeled away at the roots, and punched through the roof into the interior of the home. A couple and their dog were at home, and uninjured and evacuated to the firehouse, later spending the night at the American Red Cross Shelter in the field house at SUNY Sullivan.
The upper portion of the tree also damaged the neighbor's home at 93 Dwyer Street owned by Ryan Baldock. Baldock said he heard a loud rumbling and the tree came through the attic.
The next morning in the pouring rain, Baldock and his friends got on the roof and tried to cut away the tree.
